Independent Energy Analyst Clyde Mallinson says Eskom is good at accurately predicting the country’s energy consumption but terrible at predicting the ability of its coal-fired fleet of power stations.
Data shared by the online publication Outlier and load shedding App EskomSePush revealed that South Africans endured 332 days of rolling blackouts in 2023, 127 days more than in 2022.
It also showed that 74 days of load shedding were spent in stage six.
Mallinson says Eskom’s output from the coal fleet has been on the decline.
“Eskom are incredibly good at estimating what our demand is likely to be, what they’re not very good at, is estimating the performance of the coal fleet. In August, coming off winter, we had a period where for no explicable reason, the coal fleet was performing a bit better than average,”
“But you know what’s a horrible thing about average is, if you run for a bit better than average for a while, you’ve got to run for a bit worse than average to bring it back. The reality is, the output from the coal fleet has been on an annual decline for the last five or six years,” adds Mallinson.
The audio file below is the full interview with Clyde Mallinson
